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YEARS
F
O M
FIRST CENTURY B.C. - THE ROMANS PRODUCED TilE FREscoes TN TH8 VILLA DEI MISTER! AT
)'OMI'EII AND THE MOSAICS or NAPLES S,,"VED FROM THE ASHES OF VESUV1U$-TIlBSE REPRESENT
TilE MANY SEXUAL VAR,,,TTONS THAT GODS AND HUMANS BROUGHT TO THE SEXUAL ACT
489 - 540 - OSTROGOTHS I N ITALY
1027 - TURKISII CONQUP.ST OF JERUSALEM
78 A.D.
DESTRUCTION OF POMPEII
BY LUCA SIGi':ORELLI
CHAPE
'497 - SAVONAROLA,
WORKS-INCLUDING DAWINGS
OF NUDES-IN BONFIRES
TRIALS OF 1895
/
"
SOME
TI-IOUG HTS
CONCEHNING
PORNOGRAPHY
I
'If::HETIlER
A LAN
WE
1\1 0 0 It E
SPEAK
PERSONALLY
or
palaeo
in
u l ero, and if we trace Ollr culture back to the first anifaclS that
e,'I! eyes she stallds (tS all example oj the prehistoric genesis oj flrl, the
also have been saying that if we trace culture to its very origins, we
find its instigator LO be an obsessive smut-hound and compulsive
masturbator much like Crumb himself-or me, or you, or any of
us if wc are to be enlirely candid.
Humans, whether individually while in the womb or as a species
newly climbed down from the treetops thal we had shared with kiss-
ing-collsin bonobos, discover early on that sexual self-sLimulation
is a source of great gratification, pl'<lclically unique in our experi
ence as mammals in that it is easily achievable and, unlike almost
part of life, one of the nicer parLs at that, and as a natural subject
for our protoartists.
Lest this be seen as a reinforcement of the view that porn is wholly
a Neanderthal pursuit, we should perhaps consider ancient Greece
and the erotic friezes that adorned itS civic centers-the magnifi.
cently sculpted marble figure of the god Pan violating many of our
current barnyard statutes and a really sluuy nanny goat in the bar
gain. Images such as these were clearly seen as eminently suitable
Grecian street furniture, depictions of an aspect of mammalian
existence that all rnammals knew about already and were comfort
able regarding, and which no one from the youngest child to the
most pious priest needed protecting from. In bygone Greece we
see a culture plainly unpenurbed by its erotic inclinations, largely
saturated by both sexual imagery and sexual narratives.
8.C.AND2.0008.C
...J
V'le also see a culture where these attitudes would seem to have
worked out quite well, both for the ancient Greeks and for human
ity at large. They may well have been holloK-eyed and hairy-palmed
erotomaniacs, but on the plus side they invented science, litera
ture, philosophy, and, well, civilization, as it turns oul.
Sexual openness and cultural progress walked hand-in-hand
throughout the opening chapters of the human story in the West,
and it wasn't until the advent of Christianity, or more specifically of
the apostle Paul, that anybody realized we should all be thoroughly
(lshamed of both our bodies and those processes relating to them.
Not until the Emperor Constantine had cut and pasted modern
Christianity together from loose scraps ofMithraism and the solat
cult of Sol InvicLUs, adopting the resu\t(ltll theological collage as
the religion of the Roman Empire, did we get to witness the effect
of its ideas and doctrines when enacted on a whole society.
If we take a traditional (and predominantly Christian) view of the
collapse of Rome, then conventional wisdom tells us that Rome was
destroyed by decadence, sunk beneath the rising scumline of its orgies and of its own sexual permissiveness. The merest skim through
Gibbon, on the other hand, will demonstrate that Rome had been
a heaving, decadent, and orgiastic fleshpot more or less since its
inception. It had fornicated its way quite successfully through
several centuries without showing any serious signs of harm as a
result. Once Constantine introduced compulsory Christianity to
the Empire, t.hough, it barely lasted another hundred years.
Largely, this was because Rome relied on foreign troops-on
cavalry from Egypt, for example-to defend the Empire against the
Teutonic hordes surrounding it. Foreign soldiers were originally
happy to enlist, since Rome at t.hat point \.Ook a pagan and syncre
tic standpoint that allowed recruits to worship their own gods while
they were off in northern Europe holding back the Huns. Once
the Empire had been Christianized, however, that was not an op
tion. Rome's new Christian leaders decided that it was their way or
the stairway, and so consequently, offin distant lands, recruitment
figures plummeted. The next thing anybody knew, there were
!'
as
14
of censure I\'as to set the nudes within <I context that was either
IG
19705.
Ts,
'N'
her
whereby she Illaketh her greal Ps." That said, it wasn't until
William Blake's day in the last half of the eighteenth century, con
temporary London was awash with fuck-books and salacious prints
F,
I
I
I
I
I
Sun-and
it's better that we don't lonnellt ourselves with all the other glori-
'7
18
was told that by i\'ialcolm McLaren, and if you can't trust Malcolm
McLaren then whom can you trust?)
47
back to the primal origins of the erotic, to Bog Venus with a shiny
leather makeover and captured not in stone but in celluloid.
In 1950S culture, powerful sexual undertones were evident, sprung
up in opposition to the stining and sexless Eisenhower/McMillan
ethos of the times. Writers such as Hubert Selby, Jr., and Henry
Miller, who'd produced work in the 1930S and the 1940S that was
banned on publication , were beginning to find an appreciative
new a udience and sometimes even foreign publishers, such as
lhe Olympia Press, founded by Maurice Girodias. Hugh Hefner's
Playboy was attempting to establish soft-core porn as an upmarket
lifestyle statement, and a new wave of "sick comedy was coming
i11lo being that would find its apogee in the uncensored and oc
casionally brilliant rants of L enny Bruce. Meanwhile, in Harvey
Kurtzman's MAD there was a sharp new synthesis of hip and Jewish
humor that took sexual references as a standard part of its co
medic repertoire, as in the Kurtzman parody of Julius Caesar in
which a centurion crying "Someone's comingeth! is answered by
fi8
Judge Horn's decision meant that City Lights could put out Howl
and many other controversial pieces without fear of damaging re
prisals from those in authority. Although some writings were still
too extreme to publish for a year or two, such as the first ten chap
ters of The Nak.ed Lunch by William S. Burroughs, which had been
turned down by the Chicago Literary Revue, the ruling meant that
the Beat writers could now crystallize around Ferlinghetti's premi
ses at 261 Columbus Avenue and spark what is possibly the most
exciting literary movement of the twentieth century. It also meant
that an important legal precedent had been established, granting
sexual material immunity from prosecution if it could be shown as
socially significant or of artistic merit.
This was the defense successfully adopted some years later in
lhe widely celebrated English coun case over D. H. Lawrence's
Lady Chatterley's Lover, during which the prosecuting counsc\ Surll
marized a still-prevailing attitude toward pornography when he
suggested that no decent person would allow their wives or scrv50
L)'sistmla prints
Book,
Love
San Francisco, seemed almost the last gasp of the new purilans,
although they continued to issue intermittent squeaks (before re
emerging with a roar). By the time Essex House began to issue true
hippie porn-David Meltzer's Agency trilogy, Charles Bukowski's
and
Naked Lunch,
53
____
---'
55
---,
winning each case and pushing the frOluiers a liule further each
time. But, indeed, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Nowhere is this counter-culLUral assault on sexual conformity bet
ter exemplified than in the early comic strips of the extraordinary
Robert Crumb, whose pioneering efforts in the underground press
turned out work that would prove seminal in every sense. Using a
reassuringly familiar and therefore highly subversive style, Crumb
gleefully submerged himself in the most flagged-off and restricted
waters of the mass unconscious, serving up a vision of America as
seen through sexually obsessive eyes, peopled by Snoids and nu
bile Yetis, with its most forbiddenJoe Blow urges dragged out from
behind suburbia's concealing drapes, set down in black and white
for evel)'one to see. That Crumb's work was received enthusiasti
cally across the social spectrum would suggest that after the initial
shock had worn off, many people found it was a vision that they
recognized. They knew, in the contemporary phrase, where Crumb
was coming from.
While there were obvious precursors for the underground cartoon
explosion in
MAD
that Crumb had been a part of, it was Crumb \\'ho set the bar
for the cartoonists who would follow him, with the release of Zap
#1,
a remark
58
10
lYSISTRATA.
Throat,
purely to see what all the fuss was about, naturally, you
might think twice before regaling colleagues with the news that
you stayed home and masturbated over
Anal Virgins IV
As
DVD
GI
nism to provide the anisl with his fiercest critics. Feminists took
the position that pornography exploited and degraded women,
which was certainly an argument that it was difficult to disagree
with in light of much of the material that was available around that
time. If it had remainedjuslo that-an argument put forward as an
element in a continuing debate-then it might not have polarized
the liberal community 1.0 the degree that it unquestionabl}' came
to do. Instead of putting ideas forward as a proposition, feminism
at the time delivered them as dictums from a moral high ground.
And instead of properly considering the issues raised b)' feminism,
liberal men perceived themselves as victims of an unprovoked at
tack lipan their sexuality, responding angrily. Feminist protestors
against porn would find themselves uueasy bedfellows with right
wing Christian campaigners and would also find themselves on the
receiving end of an equiv<llenl amount of left-wing ire, some of it
justified and some of ilunfair.
For one thing, it's important to distinguish between the objections
of the chanting feminists and those of placard-waving Christians,
even when they're part of the same picket line oUl.Side an adult
video emporium. Feminist arguments, even those one may not
agree with, are at least constructed on the principles of logic and
therefore can be debated, having precepts that are falsifiab1cthat can be proved or disproved. Religiolls arguments against
pornograph}', alternately, are based upon the idea of a disapproving superbeing, proof of whose existence has thus far eluded us.
This is not to say that God does not exist, nor that religious people aren't entitled t o their point of view, but is simply intended to
point out that ideas predicated upon a specific deity's existence
arc not rational ideas, and therefore have no place in rational disCllssion. I'm sorry, I don't make the rules. That'sjust the wa}' it is,
and we would have to elltirel}, change the meaning of the English
bHlguage before we could make it otherwise.
Despite the rational basis of the feminist agenda, though, it had
been served up, understandably, as confrontation, and high feel
ings on both sides meant that a sensible debate ,,'ould never really
be a possibility, The already-fragmented Left became divided upon
G'"!
_
_
--
with
complcte impunity.
Properly packaged as a taxable commodity, erotic imagery per
vades our culture to an extent that would have been previously
unimaginable. While pornography employed by individuals for
their personal pleasurc as an aid to masturbation is still seen as
J:J/rc,.(./n
/<;'Y 4;;,.....(
10
(}\J
security. Perhaps it's a niche market that I've yet to come across,
or possibly those ideas came out of the perpetrator's own psycho
pathology, not from pornography at all.
Should we decide, then, that there's no conneClion between the
eroticism saturating western culture and the rising tide of sex
crime in that culture? Probably, once more, we shouldn't, although
the connection may not be as simple and direct as were expect
ing. It's instructive to consider different countries in the light of
their reaction to pornography, where it appears that the problem
might not be in our pornography itself so much as in the way we
view pornography as a society. In Denmark, Spain, and Holland
it is possible to find hardcore pornography in almost evell' fam
ily newsstand, such fare having become so commonplace that it is
barely noticed. With pornography accepted as a fact of life, the at
tached sense of shame and guilt we find in the United States and
Britain is conspicuously absent. Also notable in the porn-tolerant
cultures mentioned above is the low rate of sex crime, relative to
the United Kingdom and United States, that these cultures enjoy,
almost as if within such cultures porno is able to function as a social safety valve in a way that English/American society does not
allow. Given that the Internet is global, it's not that these places
have less or more porn than we do, nor that they're less sexualized by general culture than ourselves. Could it be, simply, that like
Palaeolithic fetish-worshippers or Ancient Greeks, they treat it differently and are affected by it differently in turn?
Consider how we treat pornography on either side of the Atlantic:
living in cultures that have been deliberately sexualized for pur
poses of commerce, it is not unlikely that some of the population
will find themselves overstimulated and will seek release from this
condition, usually by resorting to whatever form of porno is most
readily available. Unfortunately, in societies that have followed the
early church's lead by letting people view pornography on the sole
understanding that to do so is a sin, such a release will be accom
panied almost immediately by a reflex reaction of guilt, shame,
embarrassment, and maybe even actual self-disgust.
73
'
KOROVA MlLK BAR WAITRESS UNIFORM fROM STANLEY KUBRlCK S
ACLOCKWORKORANGF:,1971
all.
bunch of questions,
jj
the first being how we differentiate between the two. Just for the
purposes of argument let us define "good" porn, like good Judge
Clayton Horn, as that which is of noticeable social benefit, with
bad" porn as its opposite, that which is noticeably to our social det
riment. Of course, this raises a much bigger questioll, namely, docs
"good" porn even exist? If not, could it conceivably exist at some
point in the future, and what would it look like if it did?
To answer this, we could do far worse than refer back to those few
dissenting female voices that were raised, back when the feminist
debate upon pOfllography was at its hottest and perhaps its most
intelligent. Taking some inspiration from Simone de Beauvoir's
influential essay Must We Burn Sade?, the wonderful and greatly
missed Angela Carter muses on porn in her book The Sadeian
WOmetl, finally suggesting that there might be some form of pornog
PORNOKR.<.TES.1878
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%,U,J,j,-, $('('C"#
or easel and yet hanging down their heads, looking away embar
rassed as the goddess of pornography parades there brazenly above
them. Similarly, hovering in the air before her as she walks there
are three anguished cherubs, tearing at their hair as they regard
her lewd display. Behind her blindfold, unaware of how she looks
and rightly unconcerned by the controversy she's causing, utterly
unworried by the precipice she steps along, the voluptuous essence
of pornography is calm, serene. She trusts her safety to an animal
conventionally seen as the epitome of dirtiness and brutish instinct,
this despite its widely mentioned cleanliness and keen intelligence.
The goddess walks along her wall, proud and unmindful of the
drop to either side, secure in her conviction that she is a thing of
loveliness, safe in the knowledge that by following her noble and
yet much-despised animal urge she will be led unerringly toward
her rightful queenly destiny.
Shameless and blind to all the outraged posturings occasioned by
hcr presence, Venus promenades along the moral tightrope of her
path, walking the pig, sure-footed and invulnerable in her glamour
as she wanders, one step at a time, toward the hoped-for glow of a
morc human and enlightened future.
89
!-
.
.
"
'"
CD
CREDITS
)I
93
CoUage
fiUe de joie,
circa
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
/ by Alan "oorc.
p.em.
ISBN 978-0-8109-4846-4 (Harry N. Abrams, Inc.)
I. ErOlic an-HistOry. 2. Pornography-History. I. Title. II. Title:
Twenty-five thousand years of erotic freedom
N8217.E6M662009
700'A53809-dc22
2009011821
Copyright C
2009Al:m Moore
Published in
10987654321
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